


Sanctuary

by acidtonguejenny



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Fluff, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 20:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3823453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidtonguejenny/pseuds/acidtonguejenny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We’ve agreed that we likely face a great many years, together, on this hellhole island. I suppose I’ve made peace with it, as much as a man can. Mostly by avoiding thinking of it. Slade POV. Desert island curtain fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

Oliver wants to build.

“We could move further inland.” He says. “Closer to the stream, so we wouldn’t have to carry water everyday.”

I smirk, catch Shado’s eye, who’s smiling a kinder smile but still in on the joke. Oliver doesn’t like water duty. Too bad: it builds up strength. 

“That’s idiotic. No.” 

Oliver screws up his face, about to retort when Shado speaks. 

“Predators will linger near the stream, Oliver. They wait for their prey to come to drink.”

The kid blinks. “Oh.” He glares at me. “Why didn’t you just say that?”

I grunt. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something over there?” I look down at the shafts he’s left off fletching. 

“What? Oh, yeah…Jerk.” 

I toss something at his back by rote. Kid yelps. We still have so long to go to make him any kind of proper fighter. 

Building, though, is not a bad idea; Shado agrees.

-

My turn on watch. The jungle is quiet, apart from the usual night sounds. The plane, below, is dark. I’ve got the spare bow Shado carved for Oliver by my side. I’m not much of a shot, but I can reliably tap the side of the plane with an arrow, and that’s all the alarm Shado needs.

Fyer is dead. His men appear to have departed the island. Yao Fei has been laid to rest beside Oliver’s father. 

Oliver had challenged the need for a watch, anymore. 

Dumb, trusting kid.

-

We’ve agreed that we likely face a great many years, together, on this hellhole island.

I suppose I’ve made peace with it, as much as a man can. Mostly by avoiding thinking of it. 

Shado’s come to the ledge where I perch cleaning fish, to speak away from a sleeping Oliver, who dozes in the sun.

She puts her hand on the ground by my knee says, “If this island is to be our home, then we should know it.” 

And that idea sits nicely with my soldier’s sense. Know your environment, own your space and all that.

“I want to know all defensible positions.” I say. 

“I expected no less.” Shado gives a small smile. 

“And wherever we build will be on higher ground.”

“Of course.”

“The plane is awfully…visible.” I admit.

Shado touches my arm. I face her. 

“If we cannot return to our homes, then we will make our home here.”

-

Shado doesn’t find it as funny as I do, but she doesn’t stop me. Oliver wanders pitifully around the island, trying to map out the land and making a mess of it. He’s never out of sight of at least one of us, but the same isn’t true for him.

Kid does realize he’s going in circles within circles earlier than I predicted. He’s not entirely hopeless, not that I’d ever tell him as much.

Shado laughs silently, shaking the leaves around our hiding spot. Oliver looks around for the source of the sound, but doesn’t see us.

“You puff up like a proud bird.” She says in a low murmur, her face close, lips almost touching my cheek.

I turn her head and kiss her.

-

“Good work.” I say.

Oliver darts a narrow-eyed look my way, suspicious of praise, but I don’t say anything further. A string of three seabirds bounces against his back. At a glance, they seem to be neat kills, but a closer look will tell.

“I lost an arrow,” Oliver says, as if tempting me with ineptitude.

I roll my eyes, and look back to my whittling. “So make a new one, dipshit. Don’t come whining to me.” 

Oliver glares and looks to Shado for appeal, but is obviously more comfortable with the criticism than the compliment. 

“Dumb kid,” I snort. A few feet away, Shado laughs to herself.

-

It could be said that I have the occasional tendency to get handsy. I’d shout it down, obviously, but it might be said.

What guy in my position wouldn’t, though? Who blames me? A full stomach, a fire, and a warm body at either side. The knowledge that we are utterly, wholly alone on the island doesn’t bite quite so much as it comforts, just this moment. 

One of my hands has crept beneath Oliver’s shirt without anyone’s permission, fingers exploring smooth skin and rough, bumpy scar tissue in circling strokes. Oliver himself is half-asleep and pliant as a sunning cat, temptation with a bratty mouth, until I finally reel him in flush against my side. 

Shado sits on the cargo container my back is against. The length of her leg is pressed to my shoulder; her elbow is tickled by my hair. She contemplates the fire moodily, picking meat off a bone without gusto. I have an arm around her calf, and caress her ankle, beneath her pant leg. She darts me a look. I kiss her knee.

Oliver’s head falls to my chest. My fingers move up his side, over his ribs. Too skinny. Still weak.

But we have time.

-

“I’m gonna fucking snap if you don’t stop, right now.”

“It itches.”

“Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not!” Oliver says, though he obviously is. 

I grab him by the hair to hold him still, shaking his head once and making a face, eyebrows raised. “Stay.” I say.

Oliver puts up a token struggle. 

It’s not that I don’t understand. A knife being waved in your face is enough to make anyone fidget, but I’ll be damned if I have to deal with Oliver’s caveman face for another day. 

I’m not taking off the entire beard. It’ll grow back soon enough, and there’s no reason to put the kid (or Shado and me) through the itchy first stages again for no reason. 

But a haircut is well in order. If I have to sit on the kid to do it. 

Shado comes over. “No reason to waste an opportunity,” she says, smirking at me over Oliver’s shoulder, drawing a knife from her thigh-sheath.

Oliver starts. “What—“

“You’ll need to find a different handhold, Slade.” 

“—guys—“

“Sure,” I say, moving my hand to Oliver’s nape, because I’m an obliging guy. 

“—seriously, don’t I get a say in this?”

“No.” Says Shado firmly, right before she hacks off a handful of blonde hair. “You don’t have to look at yourself: we do.”

“Does that mean—“

I smack his cheek with the flat of my blade. “Stop talking. And no, it doesn’t. Touch my hair and I’ll knock you on your ass.”

When it’s done, Shado places a light kiss on Oliver’s shorn hair, and I, with a wide grin, lay a big, smacking one of my own above his eyes, right on the frown line.

-

When the island is mapped, Oliver picks the site where we will build.

Shado shoots it down. I veto his next choice. The fifth one we let him have.

What we have in mind isn’t going to be the Taj Mahal, or even a hut, really, but I don’t mind. 

“You guys gonna miss the plane?” Oliver asks. 

I shrug. “Home is where the heart is, all that shit.” Then I think about what I've said, and look up in time to see Oliver and Shado trade looks. 

Shit. Never gonna live that down, I know it.

There are worse things, probably.

**Author's Note:**

> Named for Sanctuary by Utada Hikaru (the Kingdom Hearts song that's still on my ipod in 2015) :3


End file.
